“They have in this respect, much more ability than any nation I have ever seen. The modulations are not with them slow and sad, like those of the instruments of Britain, to which we are accustomed, but the sounds, though rapid and precipitate, are yet sweet and soothing.”[266] The harp was, as in Wales, the national instrument. The bards were a hereditary class, and their guild, as in Wales, had three divisions; the Filedha, who sang both about religious and martial subjects, and were also heralds to the nobility; Braitheamhain, who chanted the laws; and the Seanachaidehe, who were the musical and poetical chroniclers and historians. Their influence and privileges were fully as great as those of their Welsh brethren, and they had many valuable possessions of land. Their skill was universally acknowledged up to their conquest by Henry II., but from that epoch the profession began to decline, although noble families still made it a point of honor to keep private bards to sing to them of the deeds of the ancestors of their house.
The influence which these songs exerted in fomenting rebellion was such, that severe laws were promulgated against them in England, and under Elizabeth all the Irish bards who were captured, were hanged.
The last Irish hard existed as late as the eighteenth century.
Turlogh O’Carolan was born 1670, and died 1737; worthily closing the long reign of the fiery minstrel guild of Ireland.
Scotland’s bardism, was similar to that of Wales and Ireland, but the ranks and privileges are less known. The bag-pipe was played as much as the harp, and there was much analogy in the ancient music of Ireland and Scotland. The scale on which the Scotch pieces were founded, bears much resemblance to the Chinese, and to some of the Hindoo modes.
In England there were also bards, but there was not an order, as in the preceding countries, and at a time when these heraldic singers were so highly honored in Wales, the singers and musicians of England were held in very slight social estimation. The irruptions of the Danes, and Norsemen generally, upon England in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, brought a taste of the forcible Northern sagas along with them, and when King Canute held the throne, bards and “gleemen,” were protected and favored, for King Canute was very fond of song. He, himself, wrote a song which was for a long time the favorite ballad of England.
The circumstances which prompted it were as follows:—
He was being rowed near the Monastery of Ely, in the evening, when the sound of the monks singing their vesper chants, came across the water; he was greatly moved by the beauty of the song, which, with the accessories of the tranquil evening, the rippling water, and the measured stroke of the oars, caused him to improvise upon the spot, a song which soon spread among the peasantry as well as the higher classes.
Only one stanza has been preserved of this interesting effusion,—
“Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely,